CMSF II and it's modules.

[BlackMoria]

The real question is not about the eventual destruction of North Korea's army and regime in the event of war. It is about the massive damage to Seoul that would happen every minute and hour it took to silence the massive, and massively fortified gun batteries just north of the DMZ. Smart bombs would get them eventually, but the bill would be extreme for every minute the guns remain in operation. The guns crews and ammo are unfortunately quite real, and it doesn't take much of a crew to aim a permanently em-placed gun at a multi square mile target that they have had 50 or 60 years to crunch the numbers on.

Yes, the danger of having the capital some 11 miles from the DMZ. But that doesn't mean one simply caves in to the demands of NK.

For one, I don't think they have the artillery rounds to shell Seoul for days on end.

Second, there are existing systems which can help. I saw a video of a test or production system of a Phalanx system mounted on a special flatbed trailer with a special radar system and control unit. The system was designed to automatically engage artillery and mortar rounds and the video showed it doing just that. Don't know how effective it actually was (claim was some 85% of artillery / mortar rounds destroyed) as we all remember the Patriot Missile controversy from the first Gulf War. It will take several semi-trailers of phalanx ammo to feed just one system against the NK artillery, but who says it can't be done and if the systems are already in place. Remember, South Korea and the US have had the same 50 - 60 years to counter the NK nightmare scenario.

There is all sorts of counter battery systems, tested and proven technology.

Regardless, Seoul most likely is going to take damage. How much we can speculate but London, Berlin and Toyoko took extreme damage in WW2 and the people survived and the governmental and military infrastructure survived. Seoul will take its baptism of fire and will rebuild. It will be another story for NK. Regime change is a absolute certainty if NK attacks - the US and Pacific Rim allies will settle for nothing less.

[dan/california]

Well, as NKs leadership get ever more unbalanced they do something that results in our musings being put to an extremely acidic test. If I were the South Koreans I would be investing a couple of percent of GDP in GMLRS rockets with bunker busting warheads. Its the only thing I see laying down enough counter fire quickly enough.

[Waaarg]

I had a chance to read the article, and what I could dissect I found interesting. It's filled with, in my opinion, gross over-estimations. I had to dismiss most of his analysis, which was large chunks of the article. I didn't come away thinking he fabricated anything, more his interpretation of the facts was wrong.

I couldn't tell when this was written either, based off one of the quotes it's after 2003. But while he might be way off on his assessment, it is an assessment of NK military strength in this decade, which is hard to find in depth.

The numbers seem to be within the spectrum of high and low estimations I have found, which gives me some measure of confidence in the numbers I have been unable to compare. This is what I took away as valuable.

Interesting development in regards to China included in the leaked documents, china communicating it doesn't object to a unified Korea under SK rule. While I detest the leak, there were a lot of interesting nuggets of info, this being #1 IMHO. What China says and what it does are 2 different beasts though. And while great news as an American (and one concerned about SK), this is terrible news as a SF fan hoping to command Black Panthers.

[ChrisND]

I had a chance to read the article, and what I could dissect I found interesting. It's filled with, in my opinion, gross over-estimations. I had to dismiss most of his analysis, which was large chunks of the article. I didn't come away thinking he fabricated anything, more his interpretation of the facts was wrong.

I couldn't tell when this was written either, based off one of the quotes it's after 2003. But while he might be way off on his assessment, it is an assessment of NK military strength in this decade, which is hard to find in depth.

The numbers seem to be within the spectrum of high and low estimations I have found, which gives me some measure of confidence in the numbers I have been unable to compare. This is what I took away as valuable.

I make it a point to avoid articles such as these, because unless you are an expert or very familiar with the subject, you don't know what lies, inventions, distortions, biases, etc could be getting implanted in your head. From what I have read in that article, I decided that I would be wasting time that would be better served reading from people that actually know something. At just a glance I could pick out obvious logical fallacies and egregious factual errors, either invented out of whole cloth or a result of sloppiness and ignorance.

You address this numbers - did he factor in anything beyond superficial numbers? Like the state of the aircrafts maintenance for example? A military on paper is very different than a real one. From what I saw of his numbers there are no citations (this by itself makes the information worthless) or any attempt to analyze these numbers. From these facts I can't take anything the article says seriously. You might think this is harsh, me coming down on the article like this, but I know all too well how easy it is for false information to become "common knowledge".

[Tank Hunter]

I just read that NK article and the only thing I can say is WOW, It's REALLY BAD.. The guy who wrote it has no clue what he is talking about. Comparing calibers and numbers, it just feels like KIM himself wrote the article.

[Sivodsi]

Anyway, trying to make this thread relevant to its title, I seem to remember Steve saying something about the Chinese People's Army being included in CMSF II - tried to find the thread using 'search' but couldn't find it. Can Steve perhaps confirm, or someone else find the thread?

It would be interesting to have the Chinese, would it not? Especially if ROK's interesting army was put together with a few older soviet models from CMSF I. Then we could play out all our Korean peninsula fantasies to our hearts content.

Hopefully that's as close to the real thing as it will get.

[Waaarg]

I agree with everyone in that it's really bad ND, and I have no personal interest in it, other than I found it interesting. Given NK is a closed society the amount of info out is anemic. I'd love any sites you find if you ever dig around, good or bad.

I find a lot of things interesting. Main goal was to try and see if NK was a realistic red force w/o China. I am not convinced SK couldn't prevail w/o our intervention.

We have had the opportunity to field 3 of the top 5 tanks in the world (not my ranking), the other 2 are in Israel and South Korea. We have Russia to play with in Afghan, and Russian equipment in SF. So SK And Allies Blue vs NK and China Red present the most interesting game IMHO outside of Israel.

If there was any hope for the Merkava, I'd campaign for that as well

The game play possibilities of a Transport and Tank mechanics on the same vehicle in Sf......well I can always day dream.

[Lethaface]

Seems that "Crisis on the Korean Peninsula: How to Deal with a Nuclear North Korea" from the hand of Michael Edward O'Hanlon (2003) is quite a good read regarding this issue.